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Earthquake in Northern Japan Injures at Least 91 People

TOKYO (Reuters) — A strong earthquake jolted northern Japan early on Thursday, injuring at least 91 people, trapping hundreds in halted trains and temporarily cutting off electric power to thousands of homes.

The Japan Meteorological Agency said there was no threat of a tsunami from the quake, which had a preliminary magnitude of 6.8 and could be felt as far away as Tokyo. The quake hit at 12:26 a.m.

A National Police Agency official said that 91 people were confirmed injured, 15 of whom were seriously hurt. Many were injured in falls or suffered cuts from broken glass. Public broadcaster NHK put the toll of the injured at 103.

The quake was 67 miles below the surface of the earth in Iwate prefecture, a mountainous, sparsely populated region.

“I woke up immediately,” said Sho Koseki, a city official in Hachinohe, about 342 miles northeast of Tokyo. “It felt like it was shaking for a long time. Books and other things that were piled up fell on the floor. All the doors were open and things were shattered.”

Mr. Koseki said that troops had arrived in the area to assist, and the Defense Agency said that military planes were flying over the area to assess the extent of the damage.

Japan is one of the world’s most seismically active areas, and the country accounts for about 20 percent of the world’s earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater.

Photo

An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.8 broke the window of a car dealership in Karumai, Japan, on Thursday.Credit
Kyoto News, via Associated Press

Thursday’s quake follows a string of earthquakes in the same region; one, in mid-June, killed at least 10 people.

The chief cabinet secretary, Nobutaka Machimura, told reporters that some 6,000 homes had lost electric power, but a Tohoku Electric official later said service had been restored to all but 335 homes. Nearly 160 households in Iwate prefecture were without water, a local official said.

“Once it’s light, we’ll have a better grasp of the situation and helicopters will be able see things like landslides,” Mr. Machimura said after the government set up an emergency task force at the prime minister’s official residence.

The meteorological agency warned of landslides in some areas, where strong rain was expected later in the day.

More than 700 people were stuck on five overnight trains that halted at or between stations because of the quake, said a spokesman for East Japan Railway Company.

Two trains later resumed service, but 540 people were still on board the others, which had yet to move more than five hours after the quake hit. Service was also suspended on some high-speed bullet train lines until later in the day.

Some parts of expressways were closed to traffic in the region, but they were later reopened, NHK reported. Some smaller roads remained blocked by landslides.

Photo

The quake was felt hundreds of miles from the epicenter.Credit
The New York Times

Television images showed offices with papers strewn around on the floor and some with parts of ceilings fallen down.

Fallen roof tiles and broken glass were scattered outside of some buildings, while large boulders blocked smaller roads.

“People in the store were trying to protect dishes from breaking,” a young woman in the northern city of Sendai told NHK. “I thought the big one had finally come.”

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Tohoku Electric said its nuclear facilities in the area were operating normally after the quake, except for one unit that was already off-line for maintenance work.

Tokyo Electric said its nuclear plants further south had not been affected.

Nippon Oil said its Sendai refinery was operating normally after quake.

But Tohoku Electric said it had manually shut down a 250-megawatt oil-fired power plant in Aomori, and Nippon Steel halted steel output and shut down a 149-megawatt coal-fired power plant at its Kamaishi works for inspection.

In October 2004, an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.8 struck the Niigata region in northern Japan, killing 65 people and injuring more than 3,000.

That was the deadliest quake since a magnitude 7.3 tremor hit the city of Kobe in 1995, killing more than 6,400.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: Earthquake in Northern Japan Injures at Least 91 People. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe